Report of the Pastor Johann Jacob Schudt on an Encounter with the “Wealthy“ Jew Diego Teixeira in Hamburg, 1714

Source Description

This excerpt is taken from the book Jüdische
Merckwürdigkeiten [“Jewish Notabilia”] published by the rector of
a gymnasium in Frankfurt am
Main, Johann
Jacob Schudt, in four volumes between 1714 and 1717. Himself a Lutheran,
Schudt illustrates
the anti-Judaic stance typical of this age in his observations about
contemporary Jews throughout Germany and even Europe. His Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten is an excellent example
of the growing academic interest in religious Otherness. In the first volume—the
source of the text here—Schudt reports on the Jews in Hamburg based on
observations he made from 1684 to 1689, when he studied there under the
Orientalist
Esdras Edzardi.
Schudt also
recounts an anecdote originally told by Johann Balthasar
Schupp(ius), the pastor of the church St. Jacobi in Hamburg from 1649–1661, about encountering a
Sephardic Jew in the
mid-17th
century. According to Schudt’s citation, the
anecdote was taken from a collection of writings published after Schupp’s death under the
title Der unterrichtete Student [“The Informed
Student”].